COLUMBUS, Ohio – Urban sprawl, combined with changes in agricultural practices and the downsizing of the family farm, are seen by many as a threat to the future of historic farm buildings and the rural landscape, most notably the barn.

In 2002, a non-profit organization, Friends of Ohio Barns, was formed to promote awareness of the significance of Ohio’s barns. Friends of Ohio Barns is a collection of timber framers, architects and preservationists who rally around Ohio’s barns.

Spearheading this barn rejuvenation effort is Friends of Ohio Barns Vice President Dan Troth, who is also owner of GreenTech Construction of Delaware County, Ohio.

Troth said barns – up to three per week – are being torn down by some people and they “are not being repurposed, but rather cut up and sold for their valuable wood in every state in the Union where they don’t have barns.

Friends of Ohio Barns have worked hard to open the public’s eyes to the beauty and significance of Ohio’s historic barns and the threats they face.”

Troth is a longtime member of the Timber Framers Guild. He took down his first barn in 1976 and at the time was only trying to get the slate from the roof to sell. Now, he has a deep appreciation for barns that stems in part from his childhood visits to the country while growing up in Ashland. His father was an attorney who had many clients that were farmers, and on Sundays they would visit the farms.

“Whenever they had a barn, we would play in the barn,” Troth said. “Back in those days, you could build forts with the hay bales, and I just loved it.”

Troth lives in southern Delaware County in an 1828 barn that he and his wife, Robin, converted into a house.

Friends of Ohio Barns is based in Burbank, Ohio, but has members all across the state. The group works with other organizations, like the National Barn Alliance and Barn Again!, to connect Ohio barn owners with repair specialists. It also hosts an annual barn conference.

“We want people to understand the importance of Ohio’s barns and their agricultural heritage,” said Ric Beck, past president of Friends of Ohio Barns. “Many barns in Ohio were constructed with virgin growth, first-cut timber. If you want to learn about the history of Ohio’s forests, all you need to do is go into our old barns. Plus, these historic barns showcase the incredible, distinctive craftsmanship of our ancestors. They were often built by hand in about six to eight months, and there’s a lot we can still learn from their hard work.”

Much of the non-profit organization’s work culminates during the last weekend in April each year when they host the Ohio Barn Conference and Barn Tour. During the event, guests can tour century barns, learn from Ohio historians, and enjoy demonstrations and presentations from local experts on topics such as historic barn maintenance and repair. Last April the tour took attendees to six old barns.

“These barns are perfect examples of living history, and with some work they can still be enjoyed today,” Beck said. “To preserve them is to save relics that can never be recreated and to hold onto important parts of Ohio’s history.”

In addition, Friends of Ohio Barns helps communities restore and repurpose their historic barns. For example, Beck said the group worked with the Timber Farmers Guild to save Upper Arlington’s oldest farm structure, which was built in 1838. Today, that building is known as the Amelita Mirolo Barn and serves as a favorite community destination, hosting weddings, graduation parties, family reunions, concerts and more.

Friends of Ohio Barns members have a newsletter that helps keep them informed about better ways to conserve and maintain these old barns. One way of doing this is by helping to put barn owners and barn repair specialists together.

Unfortunately, these old symbols of the state’s rural heritage are disappearing at an alarming rate. Some unwanted barns will be dismantled and rebuilt as a barn or as someone’s home, or for another purpose. Many others will end up in pieces, picked apart and scattered across the globe as lumber for flooring, cabinets, furniture and other wood products.

Ohio’s historic barns were built with the trees on farmers’ properties and the most common types of wood used were white oak, tulip popular and American beech. 

Nick Wiesenberg, geological technician at The College of Wooster, provides the technical support and logistics to date when timber-framed barns or homes were built based on dendrochronology of the structures’ beams.

The technique employs a small diameter core sample drilled from numerous beams containing the outermost ring throughout the barn. A series of 10 to 15 of these cores is used to determine the age of the trees and what year they were cut.

The core is then mounted, finely sanded and examined under a microscope to obtain accurate measurements from each annual ring. Each sample’s ring series is then statistically matched with a computer program and adjusted accordingly to create a floating series that aligns the core’s unique pattern.

“We know that the build dates of the barns we are looking at fit into a window of time typically between 1800 and 1900,” Wiesenberg said. “We then compare the floating ring-width data with historical chronologies from nearby structures that cover a timespan from about 1600 to 1900.”

The computer calculates where the samples fit best, therefore providing an exact span of dates on each sample. Based on the growth of the outmost ring, they can even tell at what point of the year the tree was cut.

“Most of the time we find the trees were cut after the leaves fell,” Wiesenberg said. “That would enable the settlers to work on squaring up the trees in the winter when they did not have field work to do and temperatures were more comfortable for felling trees and converting them into beams by hand.”

The oldest tree he and his classes have examined was a white oak which began growing before 1550. According to Wiesenberg, the earliest structure the college has dated was a house in the Columbus, Ohio, area built circa 1796. They find oak, ash and chestnut beams provide the most reliable ring structure for accurate dating. Unlike carbon dating, which is typically accurate to within approximately 50-100 years, dendrochronology can provide a date that is plus or minus zero.

“Every tree has a story to tell but it takes a special ear to know how to listen,” Wiesenberg said.